


Threnody for Innocence

by kerlin



Category: Farscape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-31
Updated: 2010-08-31
Packaged: 2017-10-11 09:08:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/110745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kerlin/pseuds/kerlin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Impossible choices and damned from the start.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Threnody for Innocence

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to ScaperRed for the beta and the patience and the pushing to post this.

  
She sat in the murky darkness, legs crossed and back ramrod straight against the wall. Her hands curled limply around the knife in her lap and the blade glinted as a console across the room flickered on, then off. The slick feel of the hilt in her fingers was at once familiar and terrifying.

  
The room was cool, cooler even than most Peacekeeper living quarters, and the cold seeped into her body from where her back touched the wall, her thin off-duty black top not offering much protection. She almost shivered involuntarily but repressed the urge, remaining perfectly still.

  
You can at least control yourself in that, she told herself harshly, even as her eyes traveled over the shapes in the room, finally alighting on a pile of tangled wires and computer chips on a table in the corner. Tech dren, and yet try as she might she couldn't sum up any revulsion toward the idea of it. She hadn't been able to for quite some time now.

* * *

  
You're seventeen cycles old, and newly graduated from Prowler attack school. You did well, near the top of your class, and you're just cocky enough to think that you'll go far fast, maybe even make Officer soon. You have all the hereditary arrogance and cold-bloodedness of those born into the service, and all the repressed emotional confusion of a young woman who has always had just a little bit too much sensitivity to be the perfect soldier.

  
But so what if sometimes you're dissatisfied with a quick frell in the back corridors after the adrenaline rush of combat practice? It's not like the recreation is bad, usually quite the contrary, and there's always your Prowler to return to, the deep cold void of space to swallow up your hesitantly treasonous emotions.

  
What you know for sure is that you're better than most of the other pilots around you, and you wear that superiority like a flint-edged shield. Not for you the shared bottle of raslak in the communal room, the coarse laughter over a game of tadek, the sidewise flirtatious glances before an agreed-upon arn of recreation.

  
But sometimes it all seems more frustrating than it really is, and it's in those moments that what should be a simple task appears insurmountable. So you slam the spanner against your Prowler, cursing the momentary impulse you'd had to fix the nav board yourself and yelling for a tech. Because honestly, that's what techs do, fix things, and it isn't your fault that all your emotions are bubbling over so that you're near to tears. Peacekeepers don't cry, that's what the crche minder told you, and it's something you've repeated to yourself over and over again.

  
So when another pilot comes over and picks up the spanner when it slides off your Prowler and clangs to the floor, you snatch it back from him, angry that he dare interfere in your business.

  
"What are you doing?" you snap, because now you recognize him, though his name escapes you. He's an officer but only a low-grade one at that, and he's much older, silver glinting through his hair. He's almost always on the bottom of the ranking list and he hardly ever leads training squadrons. He is exactly who you don't want to be, and you want him gone.

  
"Helping you," he says, an ever so slight smile tugging at his lips and almost making his angular face handsome instead of merely intriguing. He holds his hand out for the spanner, which makes you grip it even tighter and set your jaw. You're not a child, you haven't been for cycles, and who says you need help?

  
"What are you, a tech?" You infuse the word with all the classist venom your training has instilled in you, and twist your lips into a sneer. Frell him, anyway.

  
He doesn't answer, just shrugs slightly, that infuriating half-smile still touching his lips. For some reason you notice that he has wide gray eyes and that they're fixed on you, and when he closes his hand over the spanner you let him take it before you come to your senses.

  
He hoists himself up onto the Prowler, hip caught against the edge of the cockpit to steady himself, and he leans inside with the spanner. You're unsure about what to do, and so you fist your hands against your hips, knuckles turning white in agitation.

  
"You lose your temper like that often?" His voice drifts from the cockpit in an easy, conversational tone, one that you've never really had the occasion to use before and that you almost don't recognize.

  
You glance around nervously and swallow hard. No one is close enough to hear him, but you answer as if they were anyway. "Peacekeepers don't lose their temper. Anger clouds judgement."

  
He snorts, a rude noise, and there is a clinking of metal from inside the cockpit. You suddenly deduce why he's never gone far in the Peacekeeper ranks if this kind of subtle insubordination is typical behavior. Fear drops out the bottom of your stomach as you realize that you almost enjoy his irreverence.

  
"Do you grunt around with tech work often?" you snap, determined to regain the upper hand: something you begin to guess might never be possible with this man.

  
You see his shoulder shrug just before he shifts his weight so that the top half of his body disappears and all of a sudden you want him out of your Prowler. Watching him push himself further into the cockpit is an almost personal violation and you cross your arms to resist the urge to grab his ankle and pull him out.

  
"I find it interesting," he finally answers your question. "Something to pass the time." There is a noise of sparking electricity, and the smell of burned metal wafts to your nose, but he hasn't cried out so you assume it was supposed to happen.

  
"That's what sims are for." You don't understand this man, not in the slightest. Wires and chips and mangled bits of metal are not interesting. Passing time is done in the simulators, honing reflex time and losing yourself in the screaming acceleration of a snub fighter.

  
A final metallic thud echoes from the cockpit and he slithers out to land lightly in front of you, his silvery hair slightly tousled and his expression serious for the first time since he picked your spanner off the floor of the maintenance bay. "There's more to life than flying, Xhalax Sun."

  
He hands the spanner back to you and you reach an involuntary hand out to take it from him, tucking it in close to your body as he walks away, an unfamiliarly jaunty cast to his stride, and you finally remember his name. Talyn Lyczac, you mouth, and you're unsure if your lips form the name in disgust or in intrigue.

* * *

  
Her body began to tremble in earnest, and she tightened her fingers around the hilt of the knife to stop her hand from shaking. This would not do at all. She had a job to do, and forced herself to take deep breaths, clearing the sparks that had begun to gather at the corner of her eyesight from hyperventilation.

  
She was a Peacekeeper soldier, one among  
many. A member of a division, platoon, a unit, a team. Since birth she had been  
molded into perfection, and her life had revolved around flying Prowlers. It  
was what she loved doing, and all she ever wanted to be. No one could take that  
away from her.

And yet now she felt so incredibly alone  
it was an almost physical ache. To combat it she tightened her hand even more  
around the knife, knuckles screaming in pain as her muscles strained against  
the hard plastic of the hilt.

Despite herself her eyes wandered around  
the half-dark again, and outlined the shape of a bottle of raslak on the stand  
by the bed. She suddenly wished she'd had something to drink before coming,  
but it was too late now.

* * *

As much as you keep yourself apart, there  
is always an internal force in you that drives you to seek out others. So you  
flit around the edges of what passes for Peacekeeper society; you seek the table  
in the corner of the common room and sip fellip nectar, the liquid burning down  
your throat and settling heavily in your stomach but affording a hazy kind of  
peace.

Even though you make the effort, your very  
posture sets you apart from the others. You never relax off-duty, you never  
relax on-duty, you just never relax. You've always been afraid that you would  
give yourself away, though you're still not sure exactly what you're supposed  
to be hiding.

So tonight you burned off all your energy  
in the sim practicing high-precision strafing maneuvers, but you hit the ceiling  
on your arn quota before you got rid of all the jittery edges inside. So you  
enter the common room and snag a bottle of fellip nectar on your way to the  
smallest table in the room, wedged into the corner and draped in shadows.

You woke up this morning with an image of  
clear gray eyes burned into your brain and you headed straight for the showers  
and scrubbed for a full quarter-arn, so hard that there is a raw spot on your  
right thigh from the washcloth. Your fingers rest there now, aware of the slight  
burning and you know you can trace the edges of the spot through the leather  
of your pants.

You're not sure how you know he's approached  
you, but there is a subtle shift in the air that catches your attention. The  
scowl reaches your lips before the smile and you are glad for that, and don't  
acknowledge him even as he shifts the table slightly to fit another chair in.  
No one ever joins you in your corner and you prefer it that way. He's crossed  
the invisible wall you built so painstakingly and you imagine there's at least  
a few pilots snickering as they watch the incompetent officer seek out your  
company, and that angers you.

"You don't talk much, do you,"  
he says, and fills a glass with another drink - raslak, something you never  
drink because you don't like to lose control that fast. Caught between proving  
him right and driving him away with a few well-chosen words, you wrap a hand  
around the glass and take a sip that turns into a gulp.

Finally choosing the lesser of two evils,  
you snap out a response. "Shouldn't you be in the officer's mess?"

"Shouldn't you be in the sims?"  
he counters easily, and that lazy smile reappears. Your hand tightens convulsively  
on the glass and you bring it to your lips, draining the rest of the intoxicant  
in a quick swallow. "Let me guess, hit your quota."

It's infuriating that he reads you so easily,  
even more infuriating that he refills your glass and that you take another gulp.  
You raise your eyes to his for the first time since you last saw him in the  
maintenance bay a weeken ago, and your fingers twitch against the raw spot on  
your leg. You sip again.

He refills your glass and this time, you're  
not sure how exactly, his hand brushes against yours. You inhale quickly and  
soundlessly and blame your sudden physical reaction on the fellip nectar and  
on the fact that it's been well over a monen since you recreated last. You're  
seventeen cycles old and while your body has finished navigating the chaos of  
adolescence more or less successfully, it only seems to grow more sensitive  
to physical touch as the cycles pass.

Your thoughts are by this time comfortably  
blurred but not completely out of your reach; you are much too careful to ever  
let them go completely. You sense, however, that that line is growing near and  
so you begin to rise without explanation or excuse.

His hand grasps yours and its calluses rub  
into your palm. You freeze in mid-motion and look into his eyes where you see  
reflected more things than you can name. This is perhaps the only time since  
your hasty first experiments in recreation with a young fellow cadet, long before  
Prowler attack school, that you've recognized a mutually understood need.

Need scares you, more than you can ever  
express. You know that you feel more than you ought, you know that this man,  
this odd pilot who knows tech work, is probably much older than your anonymous  
father would be, you know a thousand and one reasons to jerk your hand away  
and stalk off, but you can't shake this feeling that you don't have words or  
contexts of your own to articulate - you'd have to borrow ideas from other cultures,  
words like fate and destiny. Your only frame of references are projected flight  
vectors and planned group maneuvers, and you sense that these concepts are in  
a way wholly inadequate.

You will never be sure exactly how you got  
to his quarters but you do know that somewhere along the way you compartmentalize  
your previous thoughts into a simple biological need unexpectedly focused on  
this aggravating man.

That lasts until he reaches back and tugs  
your hair out of its tight Peacekeeper braid, the dark mass cascading forward  
to brush at your cheeks and something inexplicable wings its way to your stomach  
and tightens. You open and then close your mouth, adrift in confusion. You've  
never recreated like this before; it has always been a hard, fast frell in the  
darkness of the barracks, another way to burn off the extra energy from training  
or battle and to sate the annoying biological demands your body makes upon you.

He pushes you back on the bed and slides  
your top over your head, his touch and gaze reverent in a way that you add to  
the growing list of things you've never experienced before but that Talyn Lyczac  
is teaching you.

You grow suddenly impatient, desperate to  
return to territory you know, and you reach forward to yank off his shirt but  
his hands close over yours and he whispers in your ear to slow down and have  
patience.

Slow is not a concept you've ever been familiar  
with, nor is patience, but you're fast learning to appreciate both as his hands  
and his mouth teach you things that are so far outside the Peacekeeper frame  
of reference you're familiar with that you wonder where he learned them.

He is painstakingly replacing all your memories  
of recreation with something else, yet another thing you don't have words for.  
There's another level beyond the physical going on, one you're not quite sure  
of but you know it's there.

It's not automatic; you are still frustrated  
with him sometimes, this man whom you've only spoken to twice yet who seems  
to know precisely where to touch you but does it far too slowly for your peace  
of mind. But that's exactly what he is destroying bit by bit, your peace of  
mind: you know that at least part of it is the raslak but you feel yourself  
spiraling out of control in glorious waves, coherent thought left long ago on  
the maintenance bay floor next to a discarded spanner.

Afterwards, his fingertips follow invisible  
lines up and down your body as you both cool off, and you don't speak, afraid  
to prick the bubble of the moment that has arisen around the two of you, so  
fragile and wonderful. You realize that it's been a full arn since you remembered  
to hide behind an angry look and you're just about to roll out of the bed and  
dress when he leans down and kisses the raw spot on your thigh.

He looks up at you, his eyes meeting yours  
over the curves of your own body and something clicks into place inside you.  
A hollow you didn't know was empty is suddenly so full you shiver involuntarily  
and he seems to know why, because he smiles against your skin.

* * *

Despite the coolness of the room, her palms  
were beginning to sweat and the grip of the knife was becoming slippery. She  
was still concentrating on breathing deeply, in and out and in and out. The  
first thing a Peacekeeper learned: keep the body functioning and the rest would  
fall into line.

Except that was also the first Peacekeeper  
lesson she had unlearned. The body could be destroyed with simple touch, and  
in the end the rest was the only thing that mattered.

No. Her mind forced itself back into discipline,  
raising briefly the terror of the consequences for her if she were to weaken  
now. Xhalax Sun was not, nor had she ever been, weak.

The sheets on the bed were unmade. She didn't  
need her eyes to tell her that; they were always unmade, rumpled and left carelessly  
in whatever state they ended up in.

* * *

You know that Peacekeepers do not make long-term  
personal connections, and so you learn very quickly the art of keeping a secret.  
You'd always hidden small pieces of emotions before, but never anything this  
overpowering, this massive. Sometimes it seems that you hold it all in by your  
fingertips and that everyone must know, but somehow it remains a secret.

You've also never laughed this easily before.  
You remember the first time the sound escaped you in his presence after his  
fingers applied pressure to a sensitive spot on the back of your knee. The look  
of wonder on his face had overwhelmed you, and you'd pulled him up to you to  
kiss him gently, reveling in the simplicity of the moment.

You add a new word to your vocabulary: love.  
It's not so much that you didn't know the word before. It was very tentatively  
introduced to you in the crèche as love-of-comrade, a context worlds  
away from the electricity that travels your body whenever gray eyes fasten on  
you from across a room.

Talyn speaks of love in an easy, effortless  
way that you are unsure you will ever master. He waits for you to take the steps,  
and they come so gradually and so subtly that one day you realize you think  
of him as Talyn instead of "he" or "him" and you make a  
point to say his name the next time your body slides against his. He pauses  
for a moment, trembling, because he knows that for you another Peacekeeper barrier  
has fallen.

You discover differences, and you discover  
that they only strengthen the bond you have formed together. Talyn never makes  
his bed, and for a while that frustrates you. The first time he left the covers  
in disarray you stared at them in stark disbelief, forgetting for a moment that  
as an officer he is not eligible for demerits for an untidy bed. Now you cherish  
the idea of this man who leaves his sheets out of order as a symbol of himself,  
the nonconformist in a rigid society.

He does something to the monitor camera  
in his quarters so that you can be yourselves. He explains to you what he's  
done but you only hear the scream of Prowler engines when he talks of redirected  
feedback loops. You also hear, quietly, his voice telling you that there's more  
to life than just flying Prowlers, but you're not ready to take that plunge,  
not quite yet.

Talyn was planet-born and you carrier-born,  
and that explains a great deal. Always before you'd held nothing but disgust  
for the planet-born, sniveling unprofessionals who cherished family ties and  
who never seemed to get used to life inside steel walls. But somehow in Talyn  
you see someone who can bridge the two worlds and maybe take you with him. He  
talks of his family, of ripe fields of grain, of sunsets and deep lakes and  
a hundred things that you've only experienced a tiny bit of in the carrier simulation  
bays.

Weekens stretch into monens and then a whole  
cycle goes past before you notice. You are in the same company and so there  
is no great fear of being separated, but still it is one that begins to prey  
on your mind until he queries it out of you. Talyn, you learn with exasperation,  
never lets you brood over anything for long.

"And if we were?" he asks, sifting  
his fingers through your hair where it trails across the pillow. Your body seizes  
up at the thought as his eyes rest on your face. You love this man obsessively,  
with all of the intense passion that you had previously applied to your training.  
A cycle ago it took you nearly half an arn to remember his name, and now it  
is engraved on your soul.

"Talyn - " you blurt out, unsure  
of how to express your thoughts, and you are reminded momentarily of just how  
young you are.

He leans forward and silences you with his  
lips, drawing you to him and swallowing whatever words you might have had to  
say next. When you separate he rests his forehead against yours. "Xhalax,"  
he whispers, "it won't matter. I love you. We will find our way back to  
each other, no matter what."

The words touch on your thoughts the first  
night you found each other, concepts like destiny and fate that Talyn has helped  
you begin to the grasp, and for the most part you are reassured. But the lingering  
fear remains.

And a few monens later it does happen. Talyn  
is transferred to another company and the regiment is split up, half travelling  
with the command carrier to the Scarran border and half remaining to guard a  
gammak base on the edge of the Uncharted Territories. High Command doesn't like  
splitting the regiment any more than you like staying behind while Talyn is  
placed on active combat duty, and he reassures you that once the skirmishing  
on the border is finished the regiment will be reunited and he will return to  
you. A half cycle at most, he promises.

The first full night he is gone you don't  
sleep a single microt, and you learn for the first time in your life what it  
is like to be truly afraid. You've never been afraid for yourself before, but  
images of Talyn's Prowler shattering into a thousand pieces in the vastness  
of space play over and over again in front of your eyes as you shiver in your  
bunk, staring at the cold steel of the wall.

But he does return to you, and you cry for  
the first time in almost two cycles the night you return to him. Your hands  
find new scars on his body and your lips bless every one of them, and he clutches  
at you with a desperation that he's never had before.

High Command deigns to pull the regiment  
from active duty and moves the command carrier near the heart of Peacekeeper  
territory. The males are assigned mindless duties and Prowler drills, and the  
females are placed on breeding rotation. Stasis fields are released and proto-fetuses  
begin to grow into fetuses. At two monens the babies will be sufficiently developed  
to be transferred to labs and birthed the Peacekeeper way, in careful sterility.

"What is DNA composition of the baby?"  
you ask, trying to sound casual as your nails bite into your palms out of view  
of the med tech. It's not an uncommon question; you made sure to hear several  
other of the women in the regiment ask before you dared.

"A moment." The tech's fingers  
tap a few keys on the console and you're reminded of the way Talyn's hands manipulated  
the monitor camera in his quarters to safeguard your happiness from prying eyes.  
"DNA testing confirms the father as one Officer Talyn Lyczak. A well-developed  
female with no obvious defects."

You let out the breath you didn't realize  
you were holding and it takes an even greater control than before to answer  
with no inflection but mild curiosity. "Huh." You don't trust yourself  
with more than that.

The med tech shrugs, obviously uninterested  
in pursuing the conversation further. "The fetus will be ready for extraction  
in two monens. Until then, pursue your normal regime but do not take any unnecessary  
risk. Report for checkups once a weeken. Understood?"

You nod, and slide off the examination bed.  
You're fairly sure your feet don't touch the ground, and keeping a smile from  
your face as you return to the barracks is possibly one of the most difficult  
things you've ever done. Most of the other women in the regiment have nothing  
but complaints for breeding rotation; some of them have had children before,  
but all are annoyed at the inconvenience of being taken off active duty.

You tell Talyn that night, and kiss away  
the tears from his cheeks, holding onto him tightly in joy. He places a hand  
on your stomach reverently, and though you both know that the child will be  
taken from you there is something wondrous about that moment in balance.

When the two monens are up you realize that  
you don't want them to take your child from you, and you cling to Talyn the  
night before while he strokes your hair. There's nothing he can do to lessen  
your pain and you both know it. For a time you let yourself dream, and the realities  
of life have intruded at last.

You wake up after the procedure feeling  
exactly the same as you had before, and somehow that makes it all worse. You  
long once again for the cold void of space to wrap around yourself even as the  
med tech asks you for the child's name.

"Aeryn," you say, holding the  
name like a talisman. "Aeryn Sun." She will carry your name, this  
child who will not be born for another seven monens and has already been taken  
from you. Your daughter, a concept that doesn't belong to Peacekeeper culture.  
You have listened to too many of Talyn's stories about his family, because tucked  
deep inside your heart there was the hope of teaching your daughter about flying.  
For a little while you thought you would be able to show your daughter that  
there was something more than flying, but the part of you that was starting  
to move in that direction is cold and dead.

* * *

Her legs had cramped up so much that she  
was fairly sure they would refuse to function if she had to move quickly, so  
she stood and was momentarily dizzy from the blood rush. She loosened her hand  
briefly on the knife grip and restored feelingto her fingers, flexing them  
gently.

Frell, she hated waiting. So far she'd been  
able to control herself, but the rage and despair and grief were threatening  
just at the edge of her consciousness, and she was afraid that if she waited  
any longer they would explode and she would end this all by burying the knife  
in herself.

Standing, her gaze was level with the camera  
monitor on the far wall, its light blinking steadily. She stared at the lens  
dispassionately and slid back down against the wall into a crouch. Her eyes  
never left the camera, knowing that someone on the other end was watching her.

* * *

For several monens you drift in your sense of  
loss. Talyn still loves you, and you him, but his comfort is bittersweet at  
best. You look at his face and you wonder if his striking features and his beautiful  
gray eyes will be duplicated on the face of your child.

You know to the day when your child is born,  
and you spend the day in your Prowler in group exercises and then in the sim  
until late in the night. You don't go to Talyn that night; you don't sleep at  
all. You have no idea what the birth process looks like in the labs so many  
tiers below you, but you imagine you can hear the first cries of the infant  
named Aeryn Sun.

The morning after the birthing process you go  
down to your Prowler and stand in front of it, one hand on its wing, the other  
holding a spanner. The nav system was sluggish yesterday, and you want to make  
sure that there are no serious malfunctions.

You stare at the spanner in your hand until  
a familiar presence enters your peripheral vision, hand held out. You look up  
into clear gray eyes and let Talyn take the instrument from you. He moves slowly,  
afraid to startle you, as he pulls himself up into the cockpit once again.

Neither of you speaks the entire time, but you  
still reach an understanding. Talyn has lost a daughter too, though it would  
perhaps be more accurate to say he was never given the chance to have one.

That night Talyn coaxes the words out of you,  
and once you start they tumble from your mouth. You describe how you felt naming  
the daughter you would never meet, how you felt no different after she was taken  
from you and how guilty that made you feel, and how you were sure you could  
hear her crying when she was born. He understands; of course he does, his forehead  
pressed against yours and his hand on your cheek, the slight physical contact  
a reminder that you that you still have each other.

The cycles pass again and not a day goes by  
that you don't think about her. Talyn is growing old, and you begin to realize  
that he will die before you and that one day you will be completely alone. The  
day this finally enters your conscious mind your daughter is five cycles old  
and Talyn is recovering from a concussion he received in the simulator. His  
reflexes, never very good, are not what they used to be. It's only a very subtle  
difference but the sims exploit it ruthlessly.

You begin to walk the fine line between sanity  
and obsession, and it's only Talyn who keeps you grounded, who reels you back  
in when you put too much of your grief and pain and hatred into flying. Increasingly,  
you need the time with him to remind yourself that you are capable of love.  
But there is always a piece missing.

You need to see your daughter. You need to know  
that some small part of the love you and Talyn share is prospering. You need  
to talk to her, and tell her that she doesn't have to fit into the Peacekeeper  
mold. You need to try to impart to her the lesson you are still struggling to  
learn, that there is always more.

Talyn disapproves strongly of the idea. He is  
afraid of the light in your eyes when you talk about your daughter, and he asks  
you again and again to put this out of your mind, to let go of her and move  
on with your life. But that is the one thing that you can't do for him, and  
when you ask him to locate Cadet Aeryn Sun he does so in the knowledge that  
something has changed irrevocably.

You go during the night cycle, trying halfheartedly  
to stay in shadows and avoid the monitors but at this point you are so far gone  
you don't care. You are finally committing the act that has haunted you for  
five cycles. You are going to see your daughter for the first time and only  
time. Heart in your throat, you walk down the aisle, sleeping children - future  
commandos - arrayed on either side of you, but you are only interested in one.

Her bed is the last one on the right, and when  
you are at its foot you whisper her name like a prayer.

"Aeryn - wake up." You touch the end  
of the bed as you round the corner, and you lean over, placing both hands on  
the coarse blanket. It suddenly becomes clear to you how little time you have,  
and your voice is urgent. "Wake up, Aeryn."

The sleeping girl wakes and sits up, holding  
the blanket to her as a shield as she looks at you with wide blue-gray eyes.  
She is so beautiful your heart stops for a moment. You can see Talyn in her  
face, in her eyes, and you can see yourself as well. Nothing could have prepared  
you for this moment, and you know that you love this child more than you had  
ever thought possible. With a bitter start, you realize that this night awakening  
is a frightening departure from the norm, and so you try and reassure her. "Don't  
be afraid."

The words tumble out of you faster than you  
could have imagined possible. You need to convey so much information in so little  
time. "My name is Xhalax Sun - I'm your mother. You mustn't reveal to anyone  
that I was here, do you understand?" Aeryn nods, her eyes bright, and lowers  
the blanket slightly. You feel an intense surge of pride in this child, this  
incredible girl that you and Talyn created together.

You pause, and while a microt ago the words  
seemed to flow from you, now you appreciate the enormity of your task, to convey  
in so few words all the emotions that are embodied in this girl. "You were  
conceived - in love." You falter and feel tears in the back of your eyes.  
"Our love." The tears are close now, and your voice is thick. "I  
wanted you to know this. It makes you special. We wanted you." You're running  
out of time, and you want to rail against the injustice that will tear you away  
from your daughter, and you try not to reveal the pain inside as you finish.  
"We love you."

There are not enough words to express it all,  
and you have to hope that you've done something. But now your time is up. "Go  
back to sleep now." If you say her name again you won't be able to leave,  
and Aeryn obeys you instantly, rolling back into her covers. You look at her  
for a long microt, memorizing the lines of her body and the beauty of her face,  
and then you close your eyes tightly to seal the image in.

It isn't until the next morning that they come  
for you.

* * *

The door snicked open and Xhalax rose swiftly  
to her feet, knife in hand. She wasn't trembling anymore; the moment had finally  
come and it was almost as if someone else was guiding her body as she threw  
her weight into the figure that comes through the door.

He put up no resistance, falling backward  
soundlessly. The ease of movement was unexpected, and she fell forward with  
him, their bodies connecting with a thud on the floor. She began to cry when  
he recognized her, his gray eyes widening, but there was no longer anything  
she could do. It had all been decided for her, the day she decided to care.

She brought the knife up and slid it into  
his heart.

* * *

They throw you to the floor roughly, your  
hands bound behind you, and you don't bother to ask why you're here or what's  
going to happen to you, because you know. You've been a Peacekeeper since birth  
and since birth one rule has been drummed into you.

Peacekeepers don't have personal connections.  
They have friends, they don't have family, and they especially don't fall in  
love. Oh, the rule can be bent now and then, especially for the planet-born,  
but Xhalax Sun comes from a long line of carrier-born Peacekeepers bred to be  
pilots.

You broke that rule a long time ago, and  
part of you always knew that it would catch up to you. High Command is not as  
stupid as the rank and file would like to believe. You made one mistake in almost  
eight cycles, and that mistake ricocheted through your life, creating so many  
complications that being caught became almost a foregone conclusion.

You hear your own voice and realize that  
a recording of the crèche is playing. Your daughter's face flickers on  
the screen and her perfection twists inside of you, because it was all for nothing.  
There is nothing inside of you but pain, because you know that some way or another,  
it's all over.

The recording finishes, and a figure in  
Peacekeeper black and red steps forward to pull the vid chip out of the player.  
He tosses it on the floor in front of you, and you can't take your eyes off  
the stylized Peacekeeper symbol on the silver background.

"A foolish and extremely futile gesture,  
Xhalax Sun." His voice is almost disappointed, and his boot enters your  
field of vision as he squats down in front of you and takes your chin in his  
gloved hand. "I've reviewed your psychiatric reports and I'm afraid I can't  
find any major abnormalities." His voice is puzzled, now, with as much  
inflection as it probably ever conveys.

"You must have known we would find  
out." He drops your chin and you are momentarily dazed by the sudden contact  
with the hard floor. You blink rapidly a few times, and the world comes back  
into focus. The pain doesn't really faze you; you're hurting enough for a thousand  
lifetimes, and at least part of you wants it over. "We decided what to  
do with you about half an arn ago."

His finger strokes your cheek and you have  
the sudden urge to vomit, whether from panic, the blow to the head, or the cold  
leather sliding across your face, you're not sure. Instead, you swallow convulsively.

"One of them must die."

* * *

She slid the knife out and the blood gushed  
into her hands as the light faded from his eyes. He still hadn't said a word,  
nor had he put up any kind of resistance. That made it all so much worse, that  
even to the end he had that much love for her. But at least a part of him must  
have known this was coming.

His body convulsed involuntarily and she  
finally broke completely, saying his name for the first time.

"Talyn," she sobbed, choking on  
the name as his life poured out under her. She rolled off him and reached up  
to cradle his head in her arms, his blood leaving a sticky trail on the floor.  
Over and over she said his name, her rock, her hope, the one who had so long  
ago rescued her and talked about more.

More was gone now, and it was her fault.  
She'd made her choice, and it was one she had known from the moment she'd made  
it that she wouldn't be able to live with. Her hand left bloody fingerprints  
on his cheek as she traced his cheekbone.

She'd never seen so much blood in her life.  
Talyn was the first person she had ever killed with her own hands and if she  
hadn't been told it would mean the end of Aeryn's life as well, her own would  
have been the second life to end on the knife that now lay discarded on the  
floor.

Leaning down, she pressed her forehead to  
his, and her tears came in great gulping sobs, so loudly she almost didn't hear  
him breathe his last words.

"loved you" he whispered, and  
then the light went out of his eyes and she was left completely alone.

Xhalax Sun was twenty-five years old and  
the only thing she could see in her future was blood.

* * *


End file.
